Dangerously Unstable
by Nagia
Summary: Their relationship is a scattering of highs and lows, like an oscillating heartbeat. Drabbles and oneshots. [NejiTen] [07. Only Sun and Rain. Three years. 'I can live without him.' She's lying to the world. She doesn't fool anybody but herself.]
1. 1sentence themes 01 to 25

**Dangerously Unstable**

Themes 001-025

#01 - Comfort

To Neji, the most comforting thing in the world is to spar with Tenten.

#02 - Kiss

The first time Neji kissed Tenten, she immediately snapped the tessen in her right hand closed and used it to clock him on the temple.

#03 - Soft

Neji's hair is unbelievably soft, and Tenten laments her inability to play with it more often-- and is mortified when Neji turns his head to Glare at her.

#04 - Pain

This is almost as painful as nearly losing Lee, and certainly as painful as losing to Temari: watching Neji fight Naruto and lose.

#05 - Potatoes

Neji infinitely prefers herring noodles to nikujaga, but Tenten isn't that bad a cook. (1)

#06 - Rain

At home, Tenten's favourite nights are rainy nights, because she sleeps better; Neji, however, hates them: as far as the Byakugan can see are millions and millions of hateful pelting raindrops.

#07 - Chocolate

On White Day, Neji made careful mental notes of who gave Tenten chocolate, and prepared to Byakugan Glare the offenders. (2)

#08 - Happiness

If pain is watching him lose, then happiness is watching him win; he, however, is almost always proud of her.

#09 - Telephone

Tenten does not wait by the phone for the hospital's phonecall about Neji, but she would if she could.

#10 - Ears

For a man with 355-degree vision, his ears are remarkably sensitive, something Tenten uses against him every chance she gets (unlike his blindspot, which she would give her life to guard).

#11 - Name

In most Ch'ien households, the names of outsiders were mud; however, in Tenten's family, the names "Rock Lee" and "Hyuuga Neji" were spoken with reverence, then love, until eventually "Hyuuga Neji" became "Han Neji" at the beginning and ending of every conversation.

#12 - Sensual

The first time he ever saw Tenten in a cheongsam, it was through three walls and it made him weak in the knees.

#13 - Death

He very well could have died, trying to bring Sasuke back, and Tenten will never forgive the Uchiha for that.

#14 - Sex

Sex is just that much better when your partner can literally see every nerve ending, Tenten reflects.

#15 - Touch

His body is warm, even through his clothes, and Tenten is plenty happy to cuddle (though Neji would never call it that, nor admit that he was, basically, cuddling) with him.

#16 - Weakness

There are times she feels that her entire body is a weakness, whereas he only has one, and there are times she is jealous.

#17 - Tears

Knowing Neji had been hurt for a traitor's sake, filled Tenten's mouth with a salty, metallic taste; she wasn't sure if she'd bit her tongue so hard she'd bled because Sakura was there, or if she'd started crying.

#18 - Speed

In battle, he would move to be beside her in an instant; out of battle, he wasn't quite so quick (though as they grew older and taller, he lost whatever hesitance he might have had).

#19 - Wind

A snake-like stand of braided brown leather cracked just next to his ear and he immediately activated the Byakugan, only to realize that Tenten was playing with a new weapon.

#20 - Freedom

It sounds cliche, but it's true: when she is with him, he is free (so free, in fact, that he forgets all about being free or caged or anything at all but Hyuuga Neji Who Is Very Deeply Attached To Tenten).

#21 - Life

He could not have loved her if she wasn't willing to put up with his love of training-- but that was no issue at all; she didn't truly feel alive until her limbs burned and her body was exhausted.

#22 - Jealousy

Neji was always a jealous man; even watching Tenten smile at Lee could make his insides burn with it.

#23 - Hands

Her hands were slightly smaller than his, callused and worn, but, he knew, every bit as lethal as his own.

#24 - Taste

He'd had about enough of watching Lee fawn over Sakura, so Neji turned his gaze to Tenten and decided to not even _attempt_ to account for Lee's taste.

#25 - Devotion

Tenten did not turn her back on a team mate, not then, not ever-- but the fact that he _still_ wanted to train with her, even after her loss to Temari, was what truly convinced her.

* * *

(1) Nikujaga is a Japanese dish, consisting of meat and potatoes.

(2) White Day and Valentine's Day are two romantic holidays. On Valentine's, girls give their crushes chocolate; on White Day, boys reciprocate.


	2. 1sentence themes 25 to 50

**Dangerously Unstable**

Themes 026-050

#26 - Forever

They shiver as they clutch each other, rain dripping down their bodies, mingling with their blood, and her voice is hoarse when she reminds him of exactly how long he promised her.

#27 - Blood

It is warm and red sticky, smearing and staining her hands, and she wonders exactly what makes her think she has the right to touch him.

#28 - Sickness

He didn't need the Byakugan to see the grease in her hair, the paleness of her skin, or the way her grip on her weapons seemed lax.

#29 - Melody

The fire's flickering light and shadow defined the forest around them, and Tenten leaned up against him, absently humming while she tended her weapons.

#43 – Sky (1)

Tenten looks up and sees nothing but grey, leaky and wet, and she is glad that she does not have to see clear blue with white puffy clouds (she is twenty-four and does not wear pink anymore, has not worn pink since they burned Neji in white on endless white)

#30 - Star

High in the air above him-- but not out of the range of his white white eyes, _never_ out of range-- the meteor hammer glimmered and shone; like the comet for which it was named, it streaked toward him.

#31 - Home

The road has been dry and dusty and entirely too long (even worse, both he and Tenten have bled all over it; he is fairly certain that he will never get the blood out of his white gi, if somewhat uncertain as to why it matters), but the feeling of her body against his ceases to be such a burden when the green towers come into sight.

#32 - Confusion

(The world is not as it should be:) it's like looking in a funhouse mirror-- everything in front of her has fragmented and splintered, some shapes ridiculously thin, others squat and fat when they shouldn't be, and she can't help but reach out for a partner who isn't there.

#33 - Fear

"Your squad-mate's client lied to us," the Hokage says in her usual blunt fashion, and his insides go cold-- but they superfreeze and then shatter when she continues, "New intelligence suggests that the cult Tenten infiltrated tends to use genjutsu as a form of mind control."

#34 - Lightning/Thunder

Thanks to Raiga, she will always hate lightning at least a little-- but thanks to a certain incident involving Neji, a storm, and a small cabin, thunder usually sends little shivers of glee down her spine.

#42 – Clouds (2)

It is a puffball on the end of a stick; the only possible reasons he would buy it are that it is pink (and pink was Tenten's colour in much the same way white is his) and sugary (oh, how she loved sweets)-- but for those reasons, he would buy a thousand of them.

#35 - Bonds

She sometimes wonders what it looks like, this partnership of theirs, and if it shows in their chakra; during these moments of silliness, she postulates that it looks like her chakra wires, braided tight and tying them together.

#36 - Market

The (modified) kunoichi auction was, Tenten is pretty sure, a bad idea all 'round, not least of all because Hyuuga Hiashi bought her, and Neji spent the next month doing his Grump Dumpling act (Tenten is also reasonably sure that Neji never quite forgave his uncle for that, even though nothing _happened_).

#37 - Technology

Tenten can't help but smirk a little every time Gai-sensei gets out the radio-- considering the use she and Neji put those collars to once, the fact that her smirk isn't a wickedly perverted grin is something of a miracle.

#38 - Gift

"Mine has a different kind of wrapping," she said (the gold silk cheongsam looked as though someone had painted it onto her, with a slit that went sky high); Neji awoke on the fourth of July with her hair tangled in his and the 'wrapping paper' in a crumpled heap on his floor. (3)

#39 - Smile

Sudden and bright and beautiful, her smile, but best of all, it is freely given.

#40 - Innocence

Gai-sensei can speechify about maidenhood and her precious flower of youth and the dreaded 'i' word all he wants, but Tenten is pretty damn sure she's going to die a virgin anyway; Neji, on the other hand, grimly tapes his hands every time she puts on a skirt.

#41 - Completion

They are twenty-two and dying in each other's arms (her eyes burned with tears at the sight of Lee's broken body before her until she could see no more, and she can now only barely hear Neji's guttural sounds of pain), but that is not important because the war is over and they have won; the war is over and _they have won_; **the war is over and they have _won_**.

#44 – Heaven (4)

The spin made her buns come loose and she wrapped her arms tightly around Neji's shoulders and the only thought going through her head was _Now I know why they call it the 'kaiten'_ because the sky above them was a dizzying whirl.

#45 - Hell

She had an intent look on her face, and then the white smokescreen appeared, with four dragons of black smoke following; the enemy soldiers screamed like the damned.

#46 - Sun

A certain caged bird sometimes thinks to himself that he can't help but love Tenten; like sunflowers or birds in the morning, her brightness and beauty draw him in.

#47 - Moon

And the bird's tiny heaven cannot help but admire the creamy pale eyes, the stark contrast of hair like a curtain of clouds, the cool and almost serene personality.

#48 - Waves

She dispatched the enemy ninja almost without effort and did not report her kill to her squad-captain (when asked why by a man who couldn't seem to decide if he wanted to stare at her buns or her breasts, she replied, simply, "He was a Cloud Nin.")

#49 - Hair

Tenten pulled out the nearly invisible ties that held up her buns; Neji unconsciously licked his lips.

#50 - Supernova

Her hands gripped his shoulders tight enough to leave bruises, but he barely noticed; her high-pitched whimpers and moans and the explosion of white light around him were all he needed. (5)

* * *

(1) This sentence has been moved from thematic order for reasons of mood and not chronology. 

(2) See footnote 1. Basically, if I'd left 41, 42, and 43 in that order, that would have been three sad death sentences in a row, and I just didn't want to do that. Also, each sentence explores a different possibility; leaving them in direct order could have gotten confusing.

(3) For those of you who are not geeky enough, Neji's birthday is 3 July.

(4) This is an alternate. The original continues from #41: "...And then they are sixteen again and it is bright and blinding summer, a summer without end, a summer with Lee and Gai and laughter and love."

(5) This is an alternate. The original reads: Gai watches Tenten throw things at Neji from various points in their makeshift camp and murmurs to himself, "They really _are_ an explosion of youth."


	3. listen: Hush

(Nejiten Festival: Ten for Ten Challenge: 4. Listen. "They hear and understand silence, sometimes." Three drabbles.)

* * *

**Hush**

**i.**

Hospitals smell funny. You'd think, because he's a Hyuuga, that Neji would complain about the way they look. But he just hates how fragile she looks in her hospital whites against the white sheets. He hates seeing her like this.

Tenten sits in her bed, lips pursed, brow furrowed. She waits (she waits so patiently, hands folded in her lap) for some sort of rebuke.

He tries and fails to think of something. He fails to find a way to give her what she expects to hear, what she wants.

"You fought well," he tells her.

She makes no reply.

**ii.**

His uncle is long gone. He sits on his bed, tired and aching and bruised in body and in spirit.

The door opens once more. His chin lifts, he looks toward it.

Tenten.

She is silent for a long while. He expects— he's not sure what he expects. Tenten is hard to predict, no matter how well he knows her. Her mixture of kindness and bluntness is hard to gauge. Which will she be?

After more silence, she says, "Team Gai doesn't hate you."

It sounds so little, but means so much: _I don't hate you._

And then she leaves.

**iii.**

They hold each other silently, shaking and shivering. They hold each other and they hold back the night.

Her head rests on his chest; her heartbeat flutters several muscles, and a ribcage beneath his grasp, there is nothing in the world but them.

They say nothing to each other. There are no more apologies to make, no more plans to worry about. Nothing to forgive each other for or reassure each other over.

"Mission success" is such a freeing feeling.

He sees everything and she feels her traps, held close by silver wire; together, together, they hold back the night.

* * *

"And if you listen close  
You'll hear the fairylights and smoke  
of the East Coast calling" 

—Thea Gilmore, "December in New York"

* * *

(Note: You're on your own as to what was happening in that last one.) 


	4. sincerely yours: Gift

(Nejiten Festival: Ten for Ten Challenge: 2. Sincerely Yours. "She left a gift for him in his bedroom. It's made of porcelain, and it says more than you'd think. She knows he'll figure it out.")

* * *

**Gift**

Neji hadn't been expecting this. The ANBU motto, if they could be said to have one, was "Signed, Sealed, and Delivered." If they'd advertised, which they didn't, they would have advertised under, "Big problems, solved quickly, quietly, and as cleanly as you want." But ANBU never advertised; it had no official existence in the eyes of the public.

Most of the new clients who wound up hiring ANBU had no idea what they were hiring.

Neji could easily recall a conversation Tenten had once held, rather amusedly, with a man who wanted to "rehire those masked guys."

They'd done such good work, he said, that he wanted to—

"Those are ANBU," Tenten had told him, smirking. She jokingly added, "Satisfaction guaranteed. Or else."

The man chuckled and put his hand on her shoulder. He wanted to hire her.

She laughed. "I'm not ANBU! I'm just a regular ninja— jounin rank, so I take the highest mission class after ANBU."

"And what exactly are ANBU? Are they an assassination squad, or your leader's, erm, militant right hand, shall we say?" He raised an eyebrow, staring at Tenten. "Does ANBU have a, hmm, division focusing on seduction?"

The way he had stared at Tenten, practically mentally undressing her, while he posed that last question had Neji fuming. The mission briefing he held in his left hand crumpled with a loud sound.

He had never expected her to actually join ANBU. Not after that conversation. He'd hoped she would stay.

He looked down at the dragon mask on his bed. Her armourer had numbered it in the nearly invisible ANBU fashion. Only an experienced shinobi or a fellow ANBU operative would ever notice the number 'one' printed on it.

She had even replaced the mask straps with thick pink ribbon. She'd personalised it. She intended to wear it.

Neji closed his eyes, trying to recall the way she'd looked the last time they'd gone on a mission together.

She'd worn a modified version of the jounin uniform. Uniform pants under a sleek, form-fitting cheongsam and the Konoha vest over that. The cheongsam's slits had gone all the way up to her stomach for ease of weapons usage.

Neji had personally thought she wore cheongsam like that to drive men crazy. Wearing it, she automatically attracted his attention. He couldn't help noticing her; found it impossible not to trace her form with his eyes.

Even now, just visualising her in that, he licked his lips and felt his face flush a little. And the thought of what she would look like in the ANBU uniform! He bit his tongue to keep from groaning.

_Open your eyes. Don't be perverted about this._ He forced himself to open his eyes and look at his bed again.

Oh god, her mask in his bed. He licked his lips again and made himself focus on the other two objects she'd left for him. A scroll case and a photograph.

The photograph consisted of her bare left arm. It showed that at the time, she hadn't yet gotten the tattoo, although she had used some sort of pencil to sketch its general outline on her skin. Probably a form of make-up. He knew she owned it.

The scroll case contained a blank ANBU application. Neji rubbed his fingers along it before noticing a second piece of paper. He pulled it out, brow furrowing in confusion as he tried to make sense of it.

A photocopy of a request to stay in reserve until such time as ANBU could formulate an entirely new team. Why? And what was she getting at, sending it to him?

And then he understood. She must have wanted Lee to join as well. They would be a three-man team again. Just in ANBU.

Smirking, Neji grabbed a pen and began to fill out the application.

* * *


	5. whiteout: One in a Thousand

(Nejiten Festival: Ten for Ten Challenge: 3. White Out. "Tenten had a tendency to avoid looking at her non-Hyuuga students in the eyes. It was something Aburame Shinji couldn't help but notice about his jounin sensei.")

(Note: Inuzuka-Hyuuga-Aburame dream team "younger clan-relatives" remix. Some ShinoHina because I'm insane like that. No descendants of canon characters involved.)

* * *

**One In a Thousand**

Tenten had a tendency to avoid looking at her non-Hyuuga students in the eyes. It was something Aburame Shinji couldn't help but notice about his jounin sensei.

He watched her. He would have expected the Hyuuga, Hideki, to watch her, but he didn't. And the Inuzuka didn't seem to look at anybody's eyes. Dogs didn't like eye contact, he recalled.

He found his teacher attractive. He wasn't conflicted about it, though he didn't talk about it with anybody. He had no interest in talking about it, even if he wasn't ashamed.

* * *

"Why?" The student finally asks the teacher. 

The teacher, startled, shifts her grip on her yari, changing her strike. The blow, which at first would have taken his shoulder, rises to mouth-level.

Instinctive reaction, the student knows, to being questioned during battle. If your opponent is dumb enough to think he can get anything out of you, disabuse him of that notion. Emphasis on 'abuse'.

* * *

He couldn't seem to stop watching her and watching Hideki. The Hyuuga noticed, he could tell. The Hyuuga saw everything. 

Especially other approaching Hyuugas.

"How far away is he?" Tenten asked, rubbing the back of her neck.

She was sensitive to the Byakugan. Shinji had surmised that when she once leaned over and tapped Hideki on the back of the head while looking in a completely opposite direction.

There was no way she could have known that Hideki was using the Byakugan.

At the time, none of them had noticed the way her hand curled into a fist at the nape of her neck. Now, though, it was a sign that she knew she was being watched.

Hideki furrowed his brow. "Four hundred metres and closing."

Already four hundred meters? And the tone in which Hideki said that, either he didn't like the approaching Hyuuga or he didn't like how fast he was moving.

"When did you see him?"

"...four-fifty."

Tenten shook her head. "His maximum distance is sixteen hundred."

"I'm not him."

"You'll improve."

"There is nothing TO—"

"—Kaze, when did you hear him?"

"Six hundred metres." The only other kunoichi on their team, Kaze, smirked and hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her pants. Although she had normal vision (rather less glamorous than Tenten's 20/16, which was absolute perfect outside of Uchiha or Hyuuga vision, Shinji's own heightened awareness of motion, or Hideki's Hyuuga eyes), she had an amazing sense of smell, and her hearing could pinpoint heartbeats from up to 600 metres. She and Tenten had once taken a hunting trip.

With swords.

"Shinji, any friends who might be pissed off at him?"

Shinji hid his smirk behind his older cousin Shino's jacket. Oh yes, he had several 'friends' who could be persuaded to dislike the approaching Hyuuga. Several thousand, in fact.

Unfortunately, he didn't exactly have a telepathic link with any of the other insects. His link with what he considered lesser insects was hard to explain. Unique to Aburame, but not telepathic.

"Let's give him a nice surprise." Their instructor smirked and stretched her fingers, tugging on a wire.

* * *

"Why what?" The teacher asks, later, after their small battle is over.

* * *

"I'm not here for you," the Hyuuga murmured, brushing directly past Hideki to approach their instructor. 

Their instructor smirked. "I didn't think you were here for him."

The Hyuuga focused entirely on Tenten.

"Tenten." Something about his voice changed. It wasn't raw, or deeper, or husky. But there was an edge to it, almost a plea.

* * *

The student removes his sunglasses. "Why don't you ever make eye contact?"

* * *

"Later," she said, deliberately making eye contact with the Hyuuga. "Later." 

He said nothing, merely watching her. She didn't say anything either.

They stood, looking at each other, perhaps analysing each other, for several minutes.

And then she closed her eyes.

* * *

"I find pupil movement... Kind of gross, actually. Comes from working with Hyuugas for so long." The teacher looks away. "And when I'm dealing with Hyuugas— I call it a fade. It's sort of like fugue. You make eye-contact, and it's like you're lost."

* * *

He never understood that moment until he saw Shino with his team-mate, Hyuuga Hinata. 

The Hyuuga woman had been holding an armful of flowers, a tiny smile on her face.

His cousin's hand had found its way to her shoulder, and though the collar of Shino's jounin vest had blocked the lower half of his face, Shinji had been fairly certain that his cousin was smiling.

Hinata had looked up, looked over.

Their gazes had collided through peripheral vision. Shinji was sure of it. And shouldn't the sunglasses have blocked that connexion, whatever it was?

And yet somehow they both went still.

"You see all white," Shino had explained, later. "The internal reaction is exactly like a young kikai when suddenly exposed to bright light."

Shinji mentally chewed on that for a long, long time. Young kikai usually _froze_ in response to sudden bright lights. The telepathic bond had always conveyed a sense of wonder and fear. A sort of, _So, so pretty... but what IS it? Will it hurt?_ kind of reaction.

* * *

"I just see white," the teacher says. She instinctively closes her eyes as she imagines it. "It starts like a haze, but as you keep focusing, it just gets brighter and brighter, until it's _all_ white."

* * *

Shinji always thought that maybe Neji held his sensei trapped with more than just his talent, with more than the bond they shared as former teammates, with more than shared song and shared sorrow. 

Shinji always thought that maybe Neji held Tenten with his eyes. He captivated her, Shinji decided, every bit as much as she so obviously trapped him.

* * *

"The love of a young man whose sweetheart married an older man for money burns with a sputtering uncertain flame.  
And there is a love … one in a thousand … burns clean and is gone leaving a white ash.…  
And this is a thought she never explains"  
—CARL SANDBURG, "White Ash"

* * *


	6. five days: Swirl

(Nejiten Festival: Ten for Ten Challenge: 1. It's been five days. "Increments of five days are driving him mad. _Come back to me, Tenten._")

* * *

**Swirl**

**o.**

"under this tree"

It is a distress signal, those three scrawled words, written on a thin scrap of paper. Someone tore about a quarter of the paper away, but that one phrase is all he needs.

Neji closes his hand around the scrap, clenching his fist so tightly his nails dig into the meat of his hand and he bleeds.

**i.**

It's been five days. Somewhere between 'short' and 'long', more than long enough for her to die of dehydration, but not long enough for her to die of starvation.

Five days since she fell into their hands.

Six days since she last communicated with the team ("under this tree," he thinks, and closes his eyes).

Two minutes and thirty seconds before he launches his operation. He checks the wakizashi strapped to his back, pulls his gloves on a little higher, and pulls the ANBU mask down onto his face.

_(a s w i r l i n t h e a i r w h e r e y o u r h e a d w a s o n c e h e r e)_

He doesn't draw the wakizashi at all, at first. Bursts of chakra to the face, to the solar plexus, to the heart— bursts of chakra from his hands and from his feet and his knees and his elbows— these fell the first enemies, the ones who don't immediately back away at the sight of The Hawk.

He dispatches them all with the efficiency he admires in Tenten. Dragon-One. _The_ Dragon, in Konoha ANBU parlance.

She is the first woman in the past twenty years to drop the number from her codename. She will not follow Tsunade's exact footsteps— a combat specialist, an assassin, a mercenary, at the heart of it all a _killer_, not a medic, not a leader— but she _will_ be great. She will go down in history.

He stalks his way through silent halls, Divination Field turning circles in his mind. Pale green lines, forming where only he can see them. Within his field of divination, eight strikes, sixteen strikes, thirty-two strikes, sixty-four strikes, one hundred and twenty-eight strikes, two hundred and fifty-six strikes...

Doors open and close and men scream and bleed and Neji sees almost nothing of it. He sees through everything, aware only of his Divination Field, only his trigrams and his lines and there—

He sees _her_.

_(y o u w a l k e d u n d e r t h i s t r e e s p o k e t o a m o o n f o r m e)_

He finds her in the corner of her cell. She has wrapped herself up in her blankets. Her blood makes the dirty beige cloth sticky and brown; it has smeared on her face and one of her eyes has stuck closed in a mess of blue and green and sickly yellow and yes, black.

He wants to pummel the stone of the castle until either all the bones in his hands fracture or the stone crumbles to dust. He wants to pick her up and carry her out, he wants to smooth her hair back from her face and wash her cheeks and eyes with lukewarm water and kiss her and murmur pretty words that mean nothing.

_He doesn't know what to do._

"Dragon-One," he says.

She doesn't look up.

"Konoha ANBU Operative Dragon-One."

No response.

"Konoha Shinobi."

She doesn't even blink.

He is getting frantic, now, because she isn't responding and he doesn't know what to do. He kneels in front of her then, kneels and puts his hands on her shoulders and looks into her eyes.

He calls her by her gypsy name. The surname-honorific that denotes having no prior relations with a person, coupled with the way her company rendered her name in the gypsy tradition. He thinks of it as a bastardization of her name, but he says it anyway, and with the honorific, it is almost beautiful.

"Lo Tian."

Not a twitch, not a response. Nothing. She does not recognise it, does not recognise him, does not recognise herself.

So he tries again, genuinely frightened for her and trying not to be. He moves up a rank in the 'relationship' scale, still using a name that probably won't be traced directly back to her identity in Konoha.

"Fa Tian," he calls her, _near-kin, Tian_. Her eyelids flutter, so he tightens his grip and tries again. "Fa Tian. _Tian_!"

Her eyelids flutter again.

Truly desperate by this point, he drops the honorific and calls her by _name_, like the prince who stretches out his hand.

_Come back to me._

"Tenten."

She blinks, once, and her eyes focus on him, but she isn't with him.

"Tenten."

Still not enough. He makes a frustrated noise and takes a leap of faith, bounds right over propriety, pretends that this honorific isn't just for blood relatives and spouses. If it would bring her back to him, he'd marry her a thousand times, a thousand ways, in any tradition she might mention.

"Han Tenten," he says, voice cracking and raw and _Please, please, remember me, remember yourself, remember us, come back._

She blinks again, long and slow, and yes, she is focusing on him, he can see it.

But there is no miraculous sudden awareness. She doesn't come back to him with a dizzying rush of air, like a swimmer breaking the surface of a lake, and that feels like a punch to the gut.

**ii.**

It's been five days. They are in Konoha now, and that Haruno girl is watching over her nearly constantly.

Technically, Haruno is watching over them both. Neji hasn't left Tenten's side. He's tried everything he can think of to bring her back. He's wracked his brains and old mission briefings and mission reports going back to their genin days for a way of bringing her back to him.

"These were a part of the playing I heard, Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife," he whispers to her.

But she is silent and still, and he must fill in the rest: "Love that sings and hath wings as a bird, Balm of the wound and heft of the knife."

"In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, at the sea-down's edge between windward and lee."

But there is no response.

"Walled round with rocks as an inland island, the ghost of a garden fronts the sea," he murmurs and strokes her hair. "Remember that, Tenten."

The Haruno girl's eyes are troubled, a little wet with tears. "I'm not sure she can hear you."

He ignores her. "A swirl in the air where your head was once, here. You walked under this tree, spoke to a moon for me."

It is not until the Haruno girl is gone, and Tenten has remained silent for minutes upon minutes, that Neji rests his tingling forehead on the metal rail of her bed and finishes the brief poem: "I might almost stand here and believe you alive."

**iii.**

It's been five days. There are no more half-verses to go through, no more distress signals or inside jokes, nothing is calling her back, _she will not come back to him_.

Neji bows his head, keeps his voice level and sane. "This is the first time she hasn't recovered immediately."

"And I care about that, why, Hawk-Eight? The girl is catatonic. She isn't likely to recover—"

"She has only been catatonic for ten days. There is still hope—"

"The Hawk is right," murmurs Hawk-Four,her former captain. "The Dragon is a professional killer. There has to be something more to this than simple trauma. Please, call in a specialist."

"We don't have any genjutsu specialists available at—"

"—is it because the operative is female?" Hawk-Four rips off his mask and glares at their superior. Neji is faintly surprised to see Haigatake Takaha, a man he has encountered more than once.

"It is not because the operative is female. ANBU simply does not have any genjutsu specialists available at this time."

The hawk mask lands on the floor, Haigatake's boot crushing it. "Morino Ibiki. What about him?"

"He's currently working a case. ANBU does not have—"

Neji, desperately, cuts in. "Yuuhi Kurenai."

"She's not ANBU," Haigatake says, blank confusion in his face and voice.

"We do not, as a rule, contact Jounin for ANBU cases. You know this, Hawk-Eight."

"This is obviously a special case. It needs to be solved, studied, documented. Yuuhi is the best person to do it outside of Morino Ibiki."

Their superior thinks for a moment, before finally nodding his consent.

**iv.**

It's been five days. He has located Yuuhi, has requested her assistance, has issued orders—

And now, thanks to a chat with his cousin, who subsequently spoke with Yuuhi, five days after their superior's consent, Yuuhi begins to study his partner.

Neji watches, ANBU mask lowered onto his face, hands on the wickedly long, curved knives he carries for use in perfect conjunction with the Hyuuga family style. He stands by the door, just far enough away that Yuuhi can write him off, but near enough to put sharp steel into her should she try anything stupid.

As a Konoha ninja, he knows she won't. As an ANBU, he can't afford to be so sure.

Kurenai sits down beside Tenten, lowers the metal railing, and looks into her eyes.

"Definitely, she's still under the influence of genjutsu," the older woman says after several silent moments.

"Do you have any indication as to what it is?"

"Be patient, please. I could cause irreparable damage if I make a mistake." Her voice is cold, matter-of-fact. She is not bothered in the least about this fact.

Is she that confident, or does she just not care?

It'd better be the former, Neji resolves.

_(i m i g h t a l m o s t s t a n d h e r e a n d b e l i e v e y o u a l i v e) _

"She is being held in a catatonic state through genjutsu," Kurenai tells him. "It's not unheard of, though fairly rare. I haven't seen anything like this since—"

Since Mangekyou, Neji's mind supplies. Kurenai is one of the only people living who have been subjected to the Mangekyou Sharingan four times and come out sane.

Once, with Asuma.

Once, for Asuma.

Once, for Shino.

And finally, for herself. The day of victory, the day the war ended, the day Itachi died and Akatsuki fell and—

"Is there a way to bring her out of it?"

Kurenai looks at Tenten, idly brushes her hand on top of Tenten's head, and then closes her eyes. "We all lose people, Neji."

He breathes in sharply, his stomach twisting and tight and twirling in knots. Every muscle tenses, everything goes still and it hurts, yes it _hurts_.

Desperate for something to do, he takes his mask off, holds it in his hand, holds it so hard it nearly cuts him. "Is there a way?"

"It'd take time. Days, maybe weeks. And it'd be complicated. I'd have to work _with_ the genjutsu, mould it toward an exit trigger."

"Mould it?"

"Yes, mould it. It would grow its own exit trigger, likely out of a code phrase you used in the past, or maybe a line from a poem she liked, or maybe a name. It could be anything." She looks at Tenten again, closes her eyes again.

They are silent for a long while.

"It could take you years to find it, or you might never find it, or it might not be there at all."

He closes his eyes, swallows hard, opens them. "Is there any way to simplify the process?"

Kurenai looks at him. She says nothing for a long while, and Neji will not say anything until she does.

After several moments of silent scrutiny, she says at last, "We all lose people, Neji."

**v****.   
**  
It's been five days.

Neji holds Tenten's hand; Kurenai strokes her forehead, and then looks up.

"Start trying."

That's all the instruction he needs. Immediately, he begins rushing through pass phrases, starting with the ones from their genin days.

"Youthful love explosion."

"I wish I lived in Bird Country / with a farmer's daughter."

He tries and he tries, moving forward in years.

"Stately, kindly, lordly friend— condescend— here to sit by me, and turn."

"I will go back to the great sweet mother, mother and lover of men, the sea."

Desperately, recalling the cult, recalling the way she had fought her way back, he murmurs, "These were a part of the playing I heard, Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife."

She hasn't turned to face him, but her eyes focus on a fixed point, and she replies, "Love that sings and hath wings as a bird, Balm of the wound and heft of the knife."

* * *

A SWIRL in the air where your head was once, here.  
You walked under this tree, spoke to a moon for me  
I might almost stand here and believe you alive.

—Carl Sandburg, "Swirl"

* * *

Additional quotes taken from Swinburne's "A Forsaken Garden," "To a Cat," and "The Triumph of Time."


	7. gravity: In Revolution

Nejiten Festival: Ten for Ten challenge: 5. Gravity. "She orbits him, revolving around him in paths she would never understand. Paths she cannot escape and would never try to."

* * *

**In Revolution**

I am a constant satellite  
Of your blazing sun  
I obey your law of gravity  
This is the fate you've carved on me

—Vienna Teng, "Gravity"

Circles upon circles upon circles. Everything is a circle. The coin of the sun, the wheel of the sky, the ring of trees that surrounds their clearing, the roundness of her body, the clockwork patterns of their movements.

That thought pleases him. In the beginning, she tried to attack him in lines, while he countered in circles. Now, though, she has become used to circuitous attacks. She is a more than satisfactory sparring partner, unconsciously tailoring herself to his fighting style, becoming more satisfactory each day.

She takes small, slow steps around him. She grips her swords loosely. Ready to change her position at a moment's notice. It's a good decision, a good grip.

She does not warn him before attacking. She simply springs forward, the blunted swords slashing out. He counters with bare hands. Chakra just barely strong enough to protect him forces back her steel.

Light flashes. Soundlessly, she whirls away from him.

As if he pulled her on a string, she whirls right back. She spins like a top. He can barely see her for her movement. She's all steel and circling swords and every now and then flashes of white, burgundy, tanned skin or brown eyes.

The Hyuuga like round things. The root movement of their fighting style is circular. They move across their floors in a spiral. There are no hard angles or straight lines. Their sanctuary is a place of soft, round, soothing white.

Even consigned to Branch, he is the epitome of Hyuuga. He appreciates her circular rotation, the easy gyrations of her hips as she seeks to entrap him in a poor position. He appreciates every curve of her body.

His appreciation does not lead him to hesitate. He cups his palms and strikes a blow just hard enough to make it clear who won this round.

She stumbles backward; her own palm curving to touch the place that he knows will be bruised. Her eyes drift closed, lashes a dark semi-circle against her cheek. They flutter back open.

He stops the chakra flow. Watches.

She nods. "Yield."

In reply, he nods once.

They walk back to the village in silence. He takes one side of the path. She takes the other, unconsciously standing well clear of him.

She doesn't even notice it. He knows she doesn't, because her posture and body language all remain the same. Her loss does not bother her in the least. The minor injury doesn't even bother her.

Nevertheless, she remains on the other side of the path home.

Even when they enter the city proper, she stays an arm's length away from him at all times. He takes a step toward her, almost certain of what will happen.

As he expected, she takes a step away from him. She doesn't even pause her speech to do so.

It isn't until after he stops abruptly, half-turning to view something without the Byakugan, that she allows him to come closer than an arm length. He takes several steps to catch up, tells her what he saw. He deliberately lowers his voice and steps close to her, ostensibly to make sure their conversation is private.

She knows it is Hyuuga habit. A Hyuuga does not simply disclose what he sees. Certainly no Hyuuga publicly uses the word 'see' or 'watch'. Sight is something they do not speak of blithely. For some, it is so obvious that it does not merit mention; for the rest, it is a deeply personal topic. (He has never told her which type he is. For now, that's none of her concern.)

So when he obliterates his usual space cushion for a minor observation, her eyelashes flutter only a little. She shifts her focus to something else for half a second.

When they change the subject, she looks avidly at him.

That is as it should be.

They part ways shortly after that. She will walk to her home, and he will return to the Hyuuga Compound.

It was a satisfactory day, he thinks. She did not move in a straight line even once, today. It only proves that he could not make a better choice. The more time she spends near him, the more inclined she becomes to move in circles. The more signs of approval he shows her, however subtle, the more she craves it. Every time she strays, she returns. Even wounded and subconsciously wary, she must eventually spiral toward him again

He is carving her, slowly, day by day, into something perfect. It is painful, it hurts her, he knows it does. But she never complains, she never flinches, she never runs away. She orbits him, revolving around him in paths she would never understand. Paths she cannot escape and would never try to.

Circles upon circles upon circles, he thinks. Someday, he will lead her in spirals to his room; lay her down on the white bedspread covered with white circles. He will cup his palms and skim every curve of her body. When they tire, he will run his finger in circles along the flat disc of her stomach and kiss her until she thinks in circles.

* * *


	8. we might as well be strangers: Taste

Nejiten Festival: Ten for Ten Challenge: 6. We Might As Well Be Strangers. "They are strangers now. That thought leaves a foul taste in his mouth."

* * *

**Taste**

ANBU. She's in ANBU, and he isn't, and he never even knew she was considering joining.

That thought is a foul taste in his mouth.

No matter what he does, he can't seem to get rid of it.

He never _says_ anything on the matter, though. He's a Hyuuga. His pride would never allow it.

* * *

Their practise field is a jumble of weeds. Tall grass, short grass, wild onions and flowering weeds. Everywhere he looks, he sees green.

Not a bare patch of soil in sight.

All the times they practised. Every sparring match. Every footstep, every misstep, every attack or block or parry... It's all gone. Not a single speck of dirt remains to display their tracks.

How could so many years of his life vanish so easily?

It rings hollow in his chest.

He sits down by a clump of grass. The distinctive stalks of onion sway in a gentle breeze. His eyes roll to the right-most corners of their sockets. He stares at the offending plant for a moment.

When the moment is over, he grabs the blades of green. He doesn't say anything, just grips the offending plant. With a vicious jerk of his arm, he uproots it. His nose wrinkles at the onion smell.

The root and leaves of the plant land several metres away with a soft sound. It's too late.

A faint savour of onion joins the taste in his mouth.

* * *

Neji slides backward, legs bent at the knee. He travels easily along the hardwood floors. He hears a few faint sounds from the wood and knows that his movements have scuffed the floor. He doesn't care; like as not, he'll be the one cleaning it anyway. They have a rotation.

Sometimes (translation: when he is more absentminded than usual), Lee makes a mistake drawing up the shift charts. He'll forget that Tenten has left their team— how he forgets, Neji will never know, but he somehow does— and list her where she used to go in the rotation. Just after Neji, and right before Lee. Dead centre of the rotation, just as she was dead centre of everything else.

Well, now dead centre is dead. When they make the mistake, they never re-draw the charts. They just fill in for her. In rotation.

Even the rotation has a rotation.

He looks briefly at the chart. They made the mistake on this one. Lee wrote her name in bold katakana. Easy to read from any distance.

Her absence hurts so much, in that one instant, that he briefly wonders if Lee does it on purpose. It's like Gai's stomach punch all over again. The perfect revenge for the way he treated Lee all those years.

"Neji?" Gai asks. He takes one step closer, head tilted to listen to him.

He isn't listening for Neji's words. If Neji's having a problem, he'll snap his fingers once. It's a warning: don't do that again. The next time Gai nearly manages to hurt him, he'll snap twice. If he snaps three times, the match ends with no winner.

The foul taste in his mouth begins to burn, like bile. It's almost as if Gai punched him hard enough to make him throw up, but he knows he didn't. He feels no accompanying nausea.

Neji doesn't snap.

Instead, he nods and assumes a 'ready' position. With a jerk of his head, he tells Gai he's still in. Knock me dead, he says.

* * *

It doesn't take a genius or the Byakugan to recognise Tenten, even with her ANBU uniform. She looks almost exactly the same, just in an ANBU uniform. She still wears her hair in buns. The clothing is tighter, and black, but the shirt's style remains the same, and the leggings stop just where her pants used to.

There is a difference. In his opinion, it's the most important difference. All the circles and roundness have become straight lines and hard angles. She moves in a straight, incisive line. Precise. All the roundness that so appealed to the Hyuuga in him— the circuitous movements, the curves, the tendency to spin— has vanished.

The lines hurt to see. She was so beautiful. So close to perfect. And now she's _worse_ than she was when they first met, because she won't learn anymore. He cannot repair this damage.

He passes her, nods. It's a casual greeting, the Hyuuga equivalent of an absentminded wave.

She nods back. It is an ingrained reaction with no personal meaning. If he had waved, she would have returned the gesture, never caring that Hyuuga don't wave.

They know each other inside and out. They worked together for years. They influenced each other. They bonded.

They mean nothing to each other now.

They do not exchange a single word.

The taste of salt in his throat is sudden, but not entirely unexpected.

* * *

In the end, he resigns himself to the fact that they are strangers. They do not know each other anymore. She is in ANBU. If he ever joins ANBU, they will stay separate.

Sometimes, though, he dreams of curves. Tanned skin, smiling brown eyes, the half-moons of hair buns. Flashes of steel, of cream silk with white embroidery, of pink cotton and burgundy trim and a dress that, in his dreams, makes his mouth water.

He always wakes up. The glass of water he keeps by his bed does not dispel the taste in his mouth.

* * *


	9. fool me once: only sun and rain

TenSquared Community: April Challenge ("fool me once..."). "Three years. The dream lasted for three blissful years. 'I can live without him.' She's lying to the world. She doesn't fool anybody but herself."

**

* * *

**

**Only Sun and Rain**

* * *

Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.  
Over the meadows that blossom and wither  
Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song;  
Only the sun and the rain come hither  
All year long.  
--Algernon Charles Swinburne, "A Forsaken Garden"

* * *

**o.**

Ansatsu Senjutsu Tokushu Butai.

ANBU.

The mask is cold white porcelain in her hands. She can only feel the cold because she hasn't put on her gloves yet.

She's not sure she'll put on her gloves at all, today. Or the mask.

She doesn't want to.

It just isn't the same without him in her squad.

* * *

**i.**

Their old training ground is nothing more than a hill, a stream, and grass. The grass is dry with August heat. Not a single footprint or training trail remains. Even the paths that Lee stomped into the training grounds have vanished.

Green has invaded.

Everywhere Tenten looks, she sees reminders of just how empty the damn place is. There should be a muddy bare patch in that valley between the hill and the stream. But it's gone. Now it's a bunch of tall, dry stream-side grass and wild onions.

She knows exactly where it used to be, of course. Knows exactly what shape it was (it was an oval), exactly how big it was, exactly how wide it was. She traces its former boundaries with her footsteps.

It seems so small, now that she's _walking_ the place where that hard-beaten patch used to be.

Did they really train here?

It's not a question she wants to answer because it hurts too much. They were children and now they're grown (well, _she's_ grown and he's--) and the old training grounds are just useless now. Not that they weren't when they both first entered ANBU.

Wind blows. The grass sways, whispering as it goes. Dry reeds along the stream bank rustle.

She does not turn around. She keeps her gaze grim on the picture of dry, dying summer that surrounds her.

"You don't have to be here, captain." She does not even look at her team leader as she speaks to him.

Behind her, his voice is dry, husky, almost hoarse. "Neither do you."

(He is probably hoarse from all the smoking; for the thousandth time, she considers advising him to quit, but she knows exactly what he would say to that.)

"I'm here because I want to be," she says, and her voice comes out wrong, harsh. The cawing of a crow: _But I __**like**__ eating carrion!_

"So am I."

For all his sharpness and all his angles, his smoke and his lean, hard body, for all the bright, brittle coldness of his nature, he is the soft one this time.

He says it again: "So am I."

She watches the wind blow through the murmuring grass and says nothing.

* * *

**ii.**

Sometimes she wakes up and wonders if it was all some sort of cruel cosmic joke.

She thought, once, that ninja could love.

She knows now that she was nothing more than a girl. An idiot. Maybe she came late to the girl-child fantasy of romance, of love, of a happy life...

But she came to it all the same.

Three years. The dream lasted for three blissful years. Like late spring, maybe. When the pollen has been chased away by the rains but the flowers are still blooming and fruit is heavy and round and ripe.

But now it's summer. The fruit has been plucked from the trees and eaten, or harvested and sold, and the flowers are wilting from their stems. The only respite from the heat is total submersion in cold water.

She can't find water cold enough anymore. Everywhere inside her, even in her dreams, there is nothing but harsh, dry gusts of heat and dusty air.

And all she has to look forward to are autumn and winter.

She was fooling herself.

* * *

**iii.**

There are six dead men in the room. Each of them died by her hand. She doesn't have a scratch on her.

Her captain closes and locks the door the room they just left. Their assigned victim is dead. It looks like suicide.

Now they just need to make sure that these six deaths look like _oibara_: ritual suicide committed at the death of one's lord.

"He's an idiot," Hawk-Four murmurs to her.

"I know," she says.

They are silent during their work, forcing chakra into their hands and along their blades so their victims will bleed. In the end, they behead five of the men. The last man, they bisect again. This time vertically, so that his torso is a mass of cross-shaped wound. _Juumonji-giri_. A form of _seppuku_ that requires no second, and does not involve decapitation.

They survey the bloody results of their work. Tenten idly rubs a small chunk of something that is red-brown on her thigh. Red and brown smear along her glove. Good thing it's black.

Hawk-Four says nothing for a long time. They just stand there and stare at what they've done. At last, he says, "Don't let it end like this."

She shakes her head. "He wanted to leave. Probably had wanted it for a long time. There was no way I could have made him stay."

His innate sharpness comes back. "Don't be an idiot."

She goes still. "I can live without him."

She's lying to the world.

She doesn't fool anybody but herself.

* * *

**iv.**

A safehouse. Not a well-known safehouse, either. And actually a barn, not a house. They hadn't expected to find anybody in it, but his team is there. So is he.

Hawk-Eight. Hyuuga Neji.

They spend most of the night ignoring each other. She has duties to fulfill as a second in command. He has a job to do as captain of his own team.

Hawk-Four leans in a corner and chain smokes. The glinting red tips of his cigarettes look almost like iced dango in the darkness.

It isn't until late at night, when all Hawk-Four's cigarettes have long burnt out and they are the only ones awake that she permits herself to look at him.

He is still silent, still pale-eyed, still immobile as mountain and colder than ice in deep winter.

Still beautiful.

"Why did you leave?"

He doesn't say anything. Outside, there is only the sound of rain. Inside, she can barely hear the breaths of their teammates.

"Tell me."

Outside, the rain slows. She looks up and wishes to hell it wasn't late summer. Be winter, please, please, she almost begs. Snow, ice, cold, anything but arid heat that turns muggy and impossible. Anything but what she's feeling now.

When he opens his mouth to speak, the rain speeds back up. Harsh winds begin to blow.

Rain drowns out his answer at first.

Finally, he says, "I left because I kept wondering, 'And what happens when one of us dies?'"

She doesn't punch him. She does worse.

She turns away and goes to sleep.

* * *

**v.**

She kept his letter. It's still in her quarters. She reads it every morning and every night.

_It is better this way. _

--Neji

And just _what_ is better this way? She wonders about that every time she looks at the letter. She never reaches an answer.

Her floormate and over-friendly neighbour, Haigatake Takaha, comes by again. She knows it's him because nobody else knocks on her door in that pattern. It's a silly little tune, done purely to annoy her because he can.

She knows that Hawk-Four is Haigatake Takaha. It's obvious from his voice, his mannerisms, the shape and colour of his lips. (She knows those lips well. It's an odd feature to memorise, but then again, only his lips are ever visible.)

"Called him yet?"

"No," she says.

"You should."

"You should stay out of my personal life, captain."

A bitter quirk of those thin cupid's bow lips. "Think of it as neighbourly advice."

* * *

**vi.**

Late September. The world is dry and crunchy and crumbles to dust if you pick it up. Everything is red and gold and brown.

Somehow, dying has become beautiful and romantic. Everything smells of apples and hot wine. Children demand hot, sweet drinks of their parents.

"You aren't leaving me again, are you?"

He looks up from where he has perched in the dead grass, resolutely digging up the remains of all the wild onions. One eyebrow lifts, but otherwise, he makes no reply.

She returns to her work flattening the grass between the hill and the stream. It will be an oval again. This time, though, it will be larger. And they don't plan on leaving it behind.

After she gets about a meter completely flattened, she looks back at him.

"Don't leave me again."

His only reply is wordless: he holds up a patch of dead onions from where he pulled them out of their hill.

* * *

EL FIN. 


End file.
